Craftsman Style Architecture

American Craftsman architecture is a domestic architectural style inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, encompassing not only building design but also interior design, landscape design and the applied and decorative arts, beginning in the late nineteenth century and drawing on the earlier Shingle style and Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style as architectural predecessors. Its name comes from the furniture maker Gustav Stickley, whose magazine The Craftsman began publication in 1901 and helped popularize the movement's aesthetic and its emphasis on natural materials, visible, sturdy construction and clean lines over historical ornament. The style is marked by low pitched gabled roofs with deep overhanging eaves, exposed rafters and decorative brackets, wide front porches carried on tapered square columns, and multi pane windows commonly set in four over one or six over one configurations. Craftsman houses achieved their widest popularity in small and medium sized homes across Southern California beginning around 1905, where the style became known locally as the California bungalow, and remained in common use through the 1930s across western and upper Midwestern American cities before restoration and revival interest sustained the style into the present.